Sustainable Planning of Peri-Urban Areas: Introduction to the Special Issue

Peri-urban areas have enormous potential to play a positive role in enhancing urban sustainability at the global level. This is because cities in all countries have to face the challenges posed by urban sprawl. The process of urbanization will continue to grow exponentially in the coming decades. ‘Population growth and urbanization are projected to add 2.5 billion people to the world’s urban population by 2050, with nearly 90% of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa’ (United Nations, 2014, p. 1).

There are many definitions associated with peri-urban areas. The common feature of the many different types of space that are considered peri-urban is that they are transition spaces with some degree of intermingling of urban and rural uses. There is a particularly strong difference between the peri-urban areas of developing countries characterized by pollution of land and waterways, poverty and informal settlement; and those of developed nations of Europe characterized by low levels of mobility, economic performance, landscape integrity and environmental quality. Within both the developed and developing world, we must recognize the variegated nature of the territory and the variety of peri-urban areas it contains (Forsyth, 2012).

With the variability of the notion in mind we can say that peri-urban areas are generally to be found at the urban fringe along the edges of the built-up area and tend to comprise a scattered pattern of lower density settlement and urban concentrations around transport hubs. Peri-urban areas may be predominantly large green open spaces such as urban woodlands, farmland and nature reserves in the urban periphery with a lower population density but belonging functionally to the urban area. Peri-urban may be a zone of smaller settlements, industrial areas and other urban land-uses within a matrix of functional agriculture (Nilsson et al., 2013).

Peri-urban areas are generally territories affected by strong expansion processes of the city, processes that are weakly opposed by marginal agricultural activities, but where the expectations and interests of the communities are often high. Thus, they tend to have a chaotic and fragmented mix of urban and rural functions, and host uses that may be unwanted by communities – business parks, big entertainment buildings and shopping centres. There may be a high tension between the objectives of different urban and sectoral planning instruments that both promote and resist such development (Antrop, 2004). Peri-urban areas are generally thought of in negative terms rather than as positive territorial assets, which is evident in the many synonyms for peri-urban such as transitional landscapes, ‘terrains vagues’, or the territory of borders.

Planning policies and strategies for peri-urban areas must take into account their variety and begin from knowledge of the specific dynamics and development opportunities of each area. Policies and interventions will benefit from experience of approaches taken elsewhere, especially the evaluation of innovative approaches.

This special edition seeks to contribute to this evidence base by presenting studies of the performance of peri-urban areas, and evaluations of approaches to the planning and governance of the peri-urban landscape. It combines practice reviews and research articles that report, compare and evaluate different examples of the transformation of peri-urban open spaces that aim to steer them towards more sustainable development. The edition brings together five papers: four of them are from Europe and one from Australia. The papers share a common view of peri-urban areas as a particular ‘landscape’, inspired by the European landscape convention which explains that ‘landscape means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’.

The authors all recognize the difficulty of addressing the complexity of the reality of the ever-changing character of urban development. As Taylor et al. put it in their contribution to this issue: ‘a key challenge for planning the peri-urban … derives from the ability of land-use change to outstrip the development of new concepts and understandings’. The dynamics of peri-urban areas result from many drivers: urban migration, agricultural intensification, industrialization and changing preferences for the location of specific functions, like distribution centres, waste and wastewater treatment infrastructures and similar. The difficulties are compounded by governance complexity – inevitably peri-urban areas tend to extend over multiple government jurisdictions and thus their management is particularly affected by fragmentation of plans and management needing considerable cooperation. This is evident in the contribution by Patti on the peri-urban between Vienna and Bratislava, where the cross-national location adds even more complexity to the context for territorial governance.

With a focus on the peri-urban landscape and its complex mix of city and countryside, the papers here also challenge the idealized image of settlement as being either urban or rural. The examples show a very different reality with much territory now properly described as peri-urban. They also reveal the potential of the peri-urban to contribute to more sustainable development by engaging their diverse actors and communities around common objectives. Santos explains that we can understand the peri-urban as distinct but interconnected spatial units and open spaces with wide-ranging functions, but also as a fundamental part of the infrastructure of a metropolitan region. As such the peri-urban landscape presents opportunities to shape ecological networks and to foster productive economic activity. He advocates that planning of the peri-urban should be a shared process of making stronger links between the natural metabolism of territories and cultural place making.

In this way peri-urban areas are not simply the intensification of the urban in the rural, but become a spatial category in their own right, deserving of particular attention and distinctive policy approaches. The authors of this special issue advocate alternative and adapted approaches for methods of analyses, evaluation, planning and design. They address key challenges in dealing with multifunctionality. Taylor et al. discuss how the traditional understanding of settlement pattern as a distinction between urban and rural areas faces tensions when confronted in peri-urban Australia with the idea and reality of a multi-functional peri-urban landscape. In this case, the dominant competing function is the global agro-industry which has a ‘right to farm’ but is in competition with the right to a ‘good life’ for the resident population.

Magoni et al. present an example of how innovative integrated planning has addressed multifunctionality in peri-urban areas, in this case bringing together food production with environmental and landscape planning. They elaborate on the establishment of rural districts in the north of Italy that provide roundtables for the participation of farmers, public officers and citizens in cooperation on agricultural and urban planning. They advocate joint vision making among farmers, ecologists, citizens and the public sector in order to facilitate a proactive and participatory planning approach, to replace reactive and top down approaches that dominate in many peri-urban areas.

Wandl et al. also address the question of multifunctionality and present a methodology for analysis and categorization of open space according to the potential of interaction of different network operators. The case illustrates the potential for multifunctionality and interaction but also reveals underlying competition. They emphasize the relationship between spatial structure and multifunctionality and suggest that design and planning should not focus on programmatic needs only, but also propose spatial compositions that are able to facilitate a variety of different uses and related spatial needs. Patti explains how sustainability can be pursued in peri-urban areas with the example of the ‘Ökokonto’, a planning tool for environmental compensation where municipalities can collect points according to the environmentally sustainable projects they carry out. Points can then be exchanged with other municipalities to compensate projects with a higher environmental impact.

In sum, the contributions to this special issue emphasize that planning in peri-urban areas requires strong participatory involvement of the population in order to move between negative ‘not in my backyard’ responses to more positive cooperation. The challenge of planning the future sustainable development of peri-urban areas is principally to overcome the separation of urban and rural planning and the separation of functions to achieve multifunctionality. An integrated approach is needed which can address environmental protection, the provision of ecosystem services and the creation of green infrastructure alongside local economic development, and the maintenance of quality of life.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.